A Christmas tradition
by HushBugger
Summary: Christmas draws near, and everyone gets in the spirit. Everyone, that is, except Flowey. Several ghosts visit him. It's not the first time.
1. Chapter 1

The Dreemurr household was asleep.

A Christmas tree in the front yard gently rustled in the wind. Asgore had balked at the idea of putting one in a pot, so they let it grow outside and decorated it each year.

A planter led up to one of the windows on the ground floor, with the other end buried in the ground, as a sort of ramp. Behind the window, behind a curtain, in another planter mounted on the wall, slept Flowey.

Frisk slept in the same room, in a bed. Most of the furniture, aside from the planters, was theirs, as were the already slightly faded Mettaton posters on the walls. Flowey was slowly warming up to the idea of adding his own.

The window creaked open. A gust of wind swept the curtain aside. Flowey woke up, just in time to see a familiar figure climb inside, and face him. It was transparent, but he knew it well. " _Howdy!_ " it said. A bit too cheerful for its expression.

"Here we go again," Flowey muttered.

" _In life I was Asriel Dreemurr,_ " the ghost howled, " _and…_ " It looked around. "Sorry. I think there's been a mix-up."

"No, this is the right address," Flowey said.

The gost pulled a translucent piece of paper from its pocket. "It says here I'm supposed to haunt a 112-year-old man with terminally low levels of Christmas Spirit. You don't look that old. No offense."

"It's because you idiots only check the birth date."

"Isn't that -"

"It's complicated."

"Um. Anyway." The ghost scraped its throat, and began again. " _The spirits of all men must walk the Earth as they didn't in life, and if you continue forging your own chains, Asriel… Dreemurr…_ " It frowned. "Okay, this is definitely wrong. I'm supposed to take the appea- I mean, either I'm Asriel Dreemurr, or you are. Not both."

"It's because I already died once and your stupid system thinks I'm closest to myself. _Personally_ , I could think of a better candidate. But that's just me."

"Well, I don't do the scheduling." The ghost eyed him suspiciously. "Have you been haunted before?"

"Good job on figuring it out, genius. Sheesh."

"Hmph. No need to be rude. You, uh, _you will be haunted by three spirits. Expect the first tomorrow, when the bell tolls one. Expect the second-_ "

"I know the drill. Can we skip this bit?"

The ghost gave him an indignant look and walked away through a wall.

Flowey went back to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

The next night a bright light started to shine in the middle of the room, and a shade rose up through the floor.

It looked old. Not old the way an old man does, or even the way old buildings do. It looked old like a mountain, like an ocean, like the stars. It was past aging.

It also looked young. Its form changed constantly, and never settled long enough to make out clearly, but it was always a child. Its face changed, its hair changed, its number of limbs changed, but it didn't age. Naturally, it wore a striped shirt.

When it had Flowey's attention - Frisk slept through it, somehow - it spoke, in a soft, pleasant voice. " _I am the Ghost of Christmas Past._ "

"My past, right?"

The ghost nodded. Everything went dark.

When Flowey could see again, he floated. They were facing a dinner table. He knew nobody could see them.

Chara was looking at their plate, doodling with a fork in their mashed potatoes, and explaining. "People put up lots of lights. And other decorations. And then Santa gives people presents."

"Well," Asgore said in a serious voice, "I'll see if I can get him to pay us a visit."

Chara added, "And everyone eats chocolate cake."

"Chocolate cake?" Toriel asked. "I suppose I am not one to argue with traditions."

Asriel giggled.

The scene shifted. Walls fell away, trees sprang up, and they were in Snowdin.

Chara trudged through the snow. Asriel ran after him. "So - so we have to have a snowball fight?"

Chara nodded gravely. "It is absolutely essential."

Asriel stopped and looked around. "Can we do it here? What are the rules? Do you have to -"

A snowball hit him in the back. He froze. Then, a grin spread across his face. He stooped to pick up snow.

"Hey! Come back here!"

Laughter filled the woods.

"Why are you showing me this?" Flowey asked. "Do you think I don't remember? Do you think I don't want this?"

" _Do you want it to stop?_ "

Flowey was silent for a while. "Please keep going."

There were tears in his eyes.


	3. Chapter 3

This night's ghost did something wholly unexpected. It entered through the door.

The Ghost of Christmas Present was more solid than the ghosts that had come before it. It was taller, for one. It was also opaque, and when it walked through the room, you could hear its footsteps.

It wore a simple green robe with a white border. It had long brown hair and a beard, and a jovial expression on its face. It looked, perhaps, the way Santa Claus had looked in his younger years, before the cookies and mince pies had gotten to him, when he still had to pull his own sleigh because reindeer hadn't been invented yet.

The other ghosts had distant, echoing voices, that made them seem unreal. This ghost had one of those booming voices that made everything around it seem unreal.

Flowey had stayed up, waiting. Frisk didn't wake.

"Greetings!" it said. "It's good to see you again." It really meant it.

It sat down in Frisk's desk chair and spun it around. It should have been too small even if it wasn't a child's chair, but it still pulled it off.

"I see you're doing better than last year."

"I guess so."

"Let's go, shall we?" The ghost extended a hand.

"Hey, I did what you told me. What is it now? You wanna take me for another ride, show me how much fun everyone else is having?"

The ghost chuckled. "No, no. Please, come with me."

Flowey reached out with a root. The room instantly vanished, to be replaced by what Flowey recognized as Gyftrot's cabin, in the underground.

There was no Christmas tree here. There were no Christmas cards on the mantel. No holly hung from the ceiling. Through the window, a distinct lack of decorative snowmen was visible. Wherever Flowey looked, there were absolutely no mistletoe, fake snow, bells, candy canes or Christmas pickles to be found.

Gyftrot was reading a book that was decisively unrelated to Christmas or the season of winter. All books in the pile next to him were of a similar nature.

"Oh, I get it," Flowey said. "Very clever. You're showing me what _not_ to do."

"Hah! No, Gyftrot is enjoying himself. He's fine."

"Oh, come on!" Flowey was getting angry. "This is the opposite of what you said last year!"

"How so?"

"You know why. Last year I was still here, avoiding Frisk. Then you showed me how much fun everyone was having on the surface. Now I'm on the surface, and you show me how much fun Gyftrot is having on his own in the underground!"

"But were you enjoying yourself?"

"Well. No. But I'm not feeling a lot of goodwill and compassion now. That's why you're here, right?"

The ghost's tone turned more serious. "I'm not here for that. I can't do anything about that. I'm only here to let you do the right thing." He gestured at Gyftrot, who was still reading, oblivious of the conversation. "Christmas doesn't make him happy, and he's at ease without other people, so he made the right call. But you weren't better off like this. You're happier now then you were last year. Aren't you?"

Flowey didn't reply.

"I just want you to have a good time. Christmas matters because it helps with that. So try to have a good time, okay? With or without Christmas."

Flowey was back in his dark bedroom.


	4. Chapter 4

A shade crept into the room. It hid under Frisk's bed. When Flowey was looking in the right direction, it emerged.

It was completely concealed by a black cloak, save for a pale spectral hand. It made no sound whatsoever as it swept up and towered over Flowey.

"That only works the first time."

The ghost lowered, to face Flowey at his own height.

"Can't you take that hood off?"

The hand reached up and pulled the hood back. There was nothing underneath. He now looked at a shrouded torso instead of a shrouded head.

"You know what? Never mind. Put it back."

It obliged.

"Are you gonna scare me with the future again? What's left to scare with?"

It shrugged.

"What? _You_ don't even know why you're here?"

It didn't react.

"Oh, what the hell. Let's go."

The ghost's hand touched him, and he was lifted into the air. Together they floated down the hallway. Bright light came from behind a door, with an incomprehensible jumble of voices. It opened, just a crack, and they peeked inside.

The dinner table was blurry. Everyone seated at it seemed out of focus, in multiple places at once. The food was hard to make out.

"Is this the future?"

Every now and then, new people appeared and disappeared, too quickly to be seen. Sometimes he thought he recognized a flash of a face.

"Multiple futures?"

Asgore and Toriel stayed the same as always. Papyrus's fashion sense became more sophisticated, though just as haphazard. Frisk was slowly but surely getting taller. He didn't see himself grow an inch, but he thought something changed. Maybe his posture?

"It just keeps going, huh."

They watched as the seats moved around, the people changed, the food took strange new shapes. Things got blurrier and blurrier as the overlapping possibilities grew apart. What had sounded like ten people talking at the same time now sounded like a thousand people mumbling.

The speech devolved into noise. The blur became a glow. And the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come closed the door.

They floated back to the bedroom. The ghost's hand carefully planted Flowey in the ground.

"It keeps going."

With a nod, the ghost dissolved.

Seeing that all of this would continue, year after year, that he could always come here, that people would be there for him and he for them, that it wouldn't be taken away - it didn't fill him with love, but it did give him hope. He felt safe.

He slept easily that night.


End file.
